@0x89: because getting all kinds of device drivers for my notebook is much easier on x86 platform, compared to x64. I use my notebook as my primary development machine.
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Robert KoritnikAug 11 '09 at 5:55

Have you actually done this successfully? If so, what were you running? I know for a fact that VMware does require a 64-bit host OS in order to run a 64-bit VM, because I've tried and it told me as much.
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robAug 10 '09 at 21:50

Contrary to other answers I'm certain that you can do this, so long as your processor and BIOS support hardware virtualisation anyway. It's not a great way of doing it and I wouldn't suggest giving the guest too much memory either, but yes, yes it will work.

I would think that it would be impossible using BIOS-based hardware virtualization, and that you would have to use pure software emulation , the same as if you were emulating a PPC chip
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Matt SimmonsAug 10 '09 at 21:34

2

No, it works in hardware, you just have to enable the VT-bit via BIOS.
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Chopper3Aug 10 '09 at 21:36

1

Without more clarification from the original poster, there are no guarantees that this will work for him. For all we know he's running an Athlon 900...
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Mark Henderson♦Aug 10 '09 at 21:56

hence the 'so long as your processor and BIOS support hardware virtualisation anyway' caveat/qualifier.
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Chopper3Aug 10 '09 at 22:01

He didn't ask 'Can I do this on my PC', but 'Is this possible'. So I guess his machine isn't really relevant to the answer. Of course, it could be he really wanted to know the answer to the former question, and not the latter.
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davrAug 10 '09 at 22:33

If you can't move to Windows 64 bits because of the lack of drivers for your laptop, well I'm going to surprise you but ... you could install a 64 bit Linux distrib and it's 99% likely to support your machine out of the box. Then you can run Windows in the VMs, any version.

yes, however only if you are using a fully virtualized machine. with a fully virtualized machine the processor is software and does not rely on the physical hardware. paravirtualization uses the main(real) processor and therefore can not run at 64bit if the host is 32bit.